The Well-Intentioned Reader
by brittanywherebuthere
Summary: Sometimes when we read great books, we wish we could simply jump into a story to warn our favorite character of an impending mistake, reunite tragically separated loves, or even to enact righteous revenge by tripping an antagonist down a particularly tall staircase. But what if things didn't work out as planned? As the saying goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
1. Prologue

"You need to take her away _now_," the woman said in a hushed hurry. "You saw what they did to her today. It's only going to get worse. And that goes double for you. We can't just wait around until Stannis comes and Tyrion almost burns this place down and then you develop some _serious_ PTSD in the wake of it all." She shook her head, flustered.

He realized then that he was staring at her like an oaf, mouth hanging open slightly as her tried to make sense of her rushed words, strange accent and confusing way of speaking. He closed his mouth in a tight grimace, determined not to let on about how little her understood of her frantic monologue.

"The Imp?" he asked gruffly, feeling the corner of his mouth twitch in his annoyance. "Burn down Kings Landing? And what in seven hells is Peetee…" He trailed off slightly, trying to remember the turn of phrase she used.

"SD," she finished for him. "PTSD. Not that you would know what that is," she muttered to herself quietly, waving a hand dismissively and glancing over the ramparts. The cool wind coming off the sea pushed strands of her hair across her face, which wore a worried look underlined with a hint of desperation. She turned her head back to address him once more. "Look, all that really doesn't matter right now. You just need to grab the girl and get the hell out of Dodge."

He found that his mouth was once more agape, his brow furrowing in confusion at the strange woman before him. She seemed to realize then that he had once more failed to grasp her meaning.

"Ok, ok. What I mean to say is…" She screwed up her face for a moment in concentration, looking for the right wording. "… you _must needs_ go to Lady Sansa and tell her you're leaving the service of the King and heading North. To Winterfell. Make sure to mention Winterfell."

_To Winterfell._

For a moment he put the foreign woman before him out of his mind and pictured it in his head. He could go to her that very night. They would leave in the protection of darkness. No one was like to question them on their way out of Maegor's; he was seen often enough escorting the little bird around the castle at his Grace's behest. Once they were safely out of King's Landing, he would see that they disappeared south into the Kingswood. Those sent after them would assume their path pointed north and take immediately to the King's Road, but instead he would take her into the wood and through the mountain pass to Grandview, where they could hire a skiff or barge to take them downriver to Stonehelm. From there it would be only the matter of buying passage on a ship headed north.

Suddenly he found himself with a fully formed plan for escape. How long had his mind been unconsciously been sorting out those details? He thought back to the day he had accompanied the King to the little bird's room, just after her father had been executed. The girl had been trying to reason with the boy, trying to get away from him, trying to get back home. But as the man very well knew, there was no reasoning with Joffrey. And when the King told the little bird that he did her a favor, that he had been merciful by giving her father a clean death—that was the moment the Hound saw something change in the girl's eyes. It was as if the stories and songs that formed the foundation of her worldview began to shatter beneath her feet. He could see the innocence drain from her eyes, a dark anger filling in the gaps.

He had felt suddenly as if he was watching himself, watching his own descent into darkness as the stories he had believed in had fallen out from under him in one foul, fiery swoop. Sandor was a little boy again, overwhelmed by a pain more intense than anything he had ever imagined. His father was perched on the side of his bed, rubbing a stinking liquid on the side of Sandor's face with an old piece of fabric. Pieces of skin came away sometimes with the cloth, which his father picked off before applying more ointment.

"You'll sit still if you know what's good for you," his father told him stonily when Sandor squirmed and whimpered as the pain shot through his jaw where his father had placed the rough cloth. "Foolish boy. That was his toy," he added, shaking his head wearily.

Sandor felt the ice-cold stab of injustice, a pain more acute than his burns. "It was _my_ face!"

"You should have known better! It was _his_ toy. And so are you." The fear was clear in his father's voice. "You should see that clearly now. Maybe now you will learn how to play along. Save the rest of your face. Give him what he wants."

In that moment in her bedchamber with the King, the little bird had turned a mirror on him once more. As much as he cursed her and called her stupid, he knew in the pit of his stomach the truth, knew she was a mirror to his past. But he wouldn't bear it to continue. He would not watch as she turned into the darkness as he once had, taking refuge in the anger he found there, his only comfort. Yes, it had been at that moment that his mind had begun to plan…

"Hello?" the woman asked impatiently, bringing him back to reality. "You in there? Have you even heard a word I've been saying? We have to get her out!"

"Oh, _we_ is it?" he asked, eyes narrowing at her with distrust, wondering at her motives. "And why are you so desperate to get the girl out of King's Landing? What concern is it of yours?"

Her face, which had worn a look of frustration and impatience up to this point, now fell. When she answered, her voice was defeated rather than frantic.

"Because it's all my fault," she confessed, looking at her hands. "I messed it up. Everything that's happening to her is because of _my_ mistake."

She paused to push the wind-blown hair out of her eyes, taking a deep breath as if to steady herself. "And now it's up to me to fix it," she declared, the defiance in her voice coming back. "But I need your help."

Then she smiled, as if sharing a private joke with herself, and her eyes fixed on his once more. "Help me Sandor Clegane. You're my only hope."


	2. The Unreliable Narrator

" '_The man you hunt is dead_,' " I read for the umpteenth time. "_That was another shock. 'How did he die?_' "

"LIBBY!" A desperate whine pleaded, accompanied by the noise of four tiny, pounding fists. The noises barely registered, sounding miles away rather than on the other side of the door a few feet from where I sat curled in the chair.

" '_By the sword, as he had lived.' 'You know this for a certainty?_' "

I found myself miming how I imagined Brienne's face looked at that moment, wrinkling my eyebrows as I read the question, just how I knew she would – slightly wary but at the same time desperate for a lead. A well-known habit of mine, I often found myself even mouthing the words or shrugging my shoulders along with the characters' actions described by the author. It was also a habit I tried to keep under control when in public. Oftentimes I failed.

"Wib-beeeeeeeee," a second voice pleaded. "You said five minutes! It's been wike, a baziwwion minutes! When we gonna goooooooo?" That last syllable drew out for an eternity, a pathetic crescendo. Sighing, I allowed myself to read just a few words further.

" '_The Hound died there, in my arms. You may have seen_—' "

" ' —LIBBY!"

"Okay, okay!" I pressed the home button on my iPhone, closing the Kindle app I had been using to re-read _A Feast for Crows_. Crossing the room, I pulled the door open and laughed as I saw the pouts on the faces of my sister's offspring. "You two are absolutely ridiculous. You're lucky you're both so cute, you know that?" I asked, reaching out to grab my niece, Paisley, and prod her in the crook of her neck where I knew she was the most ticklish.

"Me! Now me!" Grayson cried, lunging towards me for his share of tickle-torture. I happily obliged.

Then I stood and surveyed them, crossing my arms in a show of disapproval. "You two are so ready to go to the pool that you interrupted me during one of my favorite parts, and yet you don't even have your bathing suits on yet?"

Thirty minutes, three bathing suits, and three coats of sunscreen later, I unlocked the gate to the pool in my sister's neighborhood and found a few chairs to settle our things on. Within seconds, Grayson was already splashing around in the shallow end of the pool, and Paisley had joined her fellow toddlers under the red mushroom fountain in the three-inch deep baby pool. With the knowledge that a few of the moms were hovering around watching the tribe of two year olds and keeping one eye on Grayson and his neighborhood friend, I allowed myself to lay out on one of the plastic, white pool chairs. I pulled out my phone and picked up where I left off.

" _'The Hound is dead, and in any case he never had your Sansa Stark,'_ " I read.

"Ugh!" I muttered to myself, annoyed. "Just tell her he's there! She's been searching forever, and he is _right there_!"

"Romance novel by the pool?" A shadow was suddenly cast over my face, and I looked up to find a man in his mid-thirties leaning over me.

"Excuse me?"

"You're reading a book on your phone, aren't you?" He smiled, tilting his head to the side. "I heard you talk to yourself. Something about wanting the characters to finally hook up?" He had apparently just gotten out of the pool. I watched as a drop of water fell from his hair to his shoulder and then ran down over his chest. He had a noticeable case of man boob, and I looked up from his chest just in time to see him leering at my own.

"Um, no. It's not a romance novel. And I don't want these two characters to get together." _I just want them to be best friends forever and go on epic adventures together_, I added in my head.

"No romance? Doesn't seem fitting for a young girl like you." This time his eyes lingered on my legs. Despite being more covered up in my green one-piece than almost any other woman at the pool, I suddenly felt naked.

"Well I guess that's for me to decide," I said dismissively, turning away from him.

Apparently he didn't take the hint.

"Well, what are you reading then?" he asked, sitting on the chair next to mine. I turned to face him and watched him twirl a large class ring around a hairy finger of his right hand.

"_A Song of Ice and Fire_. It's the series that the TV show _Game of Thrones_ is based on. Now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna to get back—"

"Isn't that show all about sword fighting and dragons? Stuff that a bunch of nerdy guys read?" he asked, chuckling. His laughter made the fat on his chest jiggle. Silence interrupted only by splashes and children shouting to one another reigned as I ignored his question. "And loaded with sex, too, right?" He allowed the question to trail off.

I flicked my eyes up to meet his own, defiant. "The books are a lot more than that. They're about family and loyalty and cunning. Love, adventure, and survival. And they're full of amazingly complex characters." I stood up and began to walk away from the man, feeling simultaneously creeped out and pissed off. Midway to the edge of the pool, I turned around and offered him a smile. "There're even a few misogynistic assholes in the books who I'm sure even someone like _you_ could relate to."

* * *

I opened the front door of my sister's house, treasuring the cool relief of air conditioning on my sweaty, slightly sunburned skin. I walked into the kitchen to find my sister, Andrea, rummaging through the refrigerator, pulling out the makings for dinner.

"Pais! Gray! Guess who beat us home?" I yelled to the kids as I sat the pool bag on the kitchen counter. I heard their shrieks of "Mommy!" and the patter of their bare feet on the wooden floor in the living room.

"Olivia, their names are Paisley and Grayson," Andrea admonished me as she closed the refrigerator door. "For the millionth time, please call them by their actual names!"

Luckily she was then tackled at the knees by two small bodies and didn't see me roll my eyes. My older sister had, in my opinion, given her poor children ridiculous and pretentious names. Which went along with her pretentious house and convertible. She had fully embraced the yuppie life of her husband's family. My brother-in-law had been born with a country club membership in his hand and was now a rich lawyer whose only casual clothes were Lacoste polo shirts and khakis. Andrea had even changed the ways she pronounced her name, going from An-dree-uh to On-dray-uh after only a few months out in the 'burbs.

Though I had already been acting as their quasi live-in nanny for a month, earning some tuition money between my last two years at college, I always felt like an outsider in their exclusive neighborhood. I drove a twelve-year-old Ford Focus, did not own a single pair of heels (which I feel is somewhat unnecessary at 5 foot 9), and had ginger hair rather than manufactured blond. My sister had tried to help me assimilate to their culture (or "fit in" as she called it) by attempting to dress me and encouraging me to watch some reality show that she and her friends discussed during their Saturday brunches. To top it all off, she was constantly pointing out things I ate and encouraging me to come with her to Pilates classes. "Seriously, Liv, sweetie… if you just lost, like, ten or fifteen pounds, you would look _so_ much better!" she would tell me.

"So what did you all do today?" she asked, looking from the kids to me.

"The usual," I said. She raised her eyebrows at me, expecting a full report. "Oh, you know," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "Sex, drugs, rock and roll."

"And swimming!" Grayson added before Andrea could utter a scandalized word to me. He then launched into a full reenactment of his ferocious pool noodle battle with his neighborhood rival, saving me from further inquiries. I took that opportunity to make my escape to my guest room. _Escape_, I thought darkly. _A real escape from this Stepford world is what I need_.

Little did I know that my wish would soon be granted. But it would be more than just an escape from the suburbs. I was in store for an adventure you were only like to find in a storybook.


	3. Down the Rabbit Hole

"Olivia Reilly?"

My eyes snapped up from my iPhone to the door where a dental hygienist stood smiling with a clipboard. I'd been waiting nearly thirty minutes for my semiannual visit to the dentist, who was apparently running behind. Dr. Nguyen was always running at least half an hour behind due to his propensity to attempt a conversation with his patients while sticking small mirrors into their mouths. But I didn't mind, because the small library on my phone always kept me busy during similar waiting room adventures. I liked reading on my phone, much to the annoyance of my mother, who constantly harped at me about the long-term damage I was certainly doing to my eyes. But, having lived my entire life with 20/20 vision, I was always slightly jealous of my friends who wore glasses and therefore embraced the risk, a rebel to the core.

After some fluoride, forced flossing, and a Spanish Inquisition about my post-graduate plans while having my tongue pushed around with small metal tools, I was free to enjoy my Saturday afternoon away from children, escaped from the Real Housewives of Kansas City. Because I was obviously living life on the edge, I decided to head towards a great used bookstore downtown. Grand plans were already shaping in my head when I pulled up outside the shop, involving a few new (to me) books and a favorite spot in the park outside the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

The inside of the bookstore was something one might expect to see on a television show about the dangers of hoarding. Books were stacked from floor to ceiling, usually precariously and always in no particular order. It was a librarian's nightmare and my own Secret Garden. One could literally lose themselves in the aisles and tiny rooms within the store (and also risk losing their life should they be interested in a book at the bottom of a towering stack).

I navigated my way past a couch buried in U.S. History Non-Fiction, around a corner covered with a stack of what looked like the entire _Anamorphs_ series, and found myself in some semblance of a Fantasy section (though it was somewhat blocked by stacks of cookbooks and children's board books). It only took me a few moments to lose myself in the titles, tilting my head this way and that to read the spines. Soon I had three books in my hand and drug myself away from the shelves, past an old bathroom that now served as the store's VHS and DVD stockpile, towards the checkout.

On my journey through the literary maze, my eyes were suddenly drawn to a number of books lying face-down that had been shoved haphazardly into a gap between computer science guides. I could only see the edges of the books' pages, but the old, slightly yellowed paper contrasted so sharply with the glossy IT books surrounding them that my internal old-book-Sneakoscope immediately began whirling.

Wedged between a lime green manual on SQL and an _Idiot's Guide to Microsoft Excel_ were four novels, all a little worse for the wear. The old copy of _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ I already owned. A book called _Die Unendliche Geschichte_ I immediately set aside, knowing that my 8th grade German, which consisted primarily of words about food, wasn't going to cut it. There was also what appeared to be a children's book called _The Forgotten Door_, which I likewise set aside after seeing what lay at the bottom of the pile: a very well read first edition of _A Game of Thrones_ by George R. R. Martin. On my bookshelves at home, I had only the recent paperback edition with a bright blue cover, so at just $1.50, this 17-year-old silvery hard cover was a total steal.

* * *

On my way to the Sculpture Park outside of the art museum, I excitedly grabbed my new copy of _A Game of Thrones_ while waiting at a stoplight. I delicately brushed my fingers along the dust jacket in the same way that someone might run their hand over the soft spot of a newborn's head. A bit of dust flew up as I flipped through the pages, which had that perfect smell you just can't get from a Kindle. _Paper perfection_, I was thinking contentedly when suddenly I saw that the last few pages of the books seemed to be missing. _Not missing_, I realized as the light turned green and I dropped the book back into the passenger's seat. _Blank_.

I bit my lip dejectedly, noting that the blank pages would probably mean that some of the appendix was missing. _But if anything, printing errors usually just make books even rarer_, I reasoned with myself. By the time I pulled into a parking spot near the park, I had already turned my thoughts away from the missing pages and begun thinking about my favorite passages, debating with myself over which I would read first.

I plopped myself down at the base of a large tree behind the museum that overlooked the expansive lawn, famous in Kansas City for being bedecked with a pair of oversized shuttlecocks. After smoothing out the skirt of my dress and laying my purse in my lap to prop up my book, I cracked open the pages of my new treasure. Starting on the last page, I began flipping through the backwards to see just how many of the pages had been affected by the printing error. As page after page of blank paper passed beneath my thumb, my eyes grew wider as I saw how much of the book was simply… not there.

Even more shocking, I could have sworn I had glimpsed the Catelyn chapter in which she meets with Walder Frey to ask for his permission to cross at the Twins. I'd just seen it minutes earlier in the car, but that last fourth of the book, which I knew from memory contained that chapter, was infuriatingly blank!

Confused and a bit worried for my sanity, I searched further into the book, continuing through the pages in reverse order, and breathed an audible sigh of relief when I finally came upon a page full of words. I recognized it immediately as the last page of the chapter in which Sansa is persuaded to write letters to her mother and brothers after Ned is taken prisoner by the Lannisters.

I had a brief moment of relief before the world seemed to stop spinning and my mouth dropped open, my eyes blinking stupidly at the page in front of me. Right before my eyes, the last words on the page were beginning to fade away, leaving only blank white paper in their absence. After just a few seconds, the entire last paragraph had almost completely disappeared.

I suddenly felt quite dizzy.

In a haze of disbelief and alarm, I began to read the second to last paragraph in some kind of panicked effort to save the words written there. Irrationally, I thought that maybe if I read the words, they would stop disappearing? Or maybe I hoped they would contain an explanation as to what the hell was going on! But by the time I was midway through reading the paragraph, almost the entire bottom half had already vanished. In a dazed rush, I whispered the last remaining printed words under my breath as the sunlight overhead seemed to grow glaringly brighter.

" '_She pulled a chair close to the hearth, took down one of her favorite books, and lost herself in the stories …'_ "

And that was more or less the moment when I passed out.


End file.
